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Observations on various subjects
Feb. 27th, 2011 10:40 pmNot that I wish any more years of Gheddafi on anyone, but the hypocrisy spouted on all sides about his refusal to budge and resolution to fight it out to the death beggars belief. The behaviour of the UN, in which he had been prominent until a few weeks ago, is nothing short of sickening; one ie reminded of a pack of vile, yapping mongrels baring their fangs without daring to get close, as a wounded wild boar is charging and turning and plunging and fighting for his life. All the people who are now passing confiscation resolutions, orders against travel, condemnations, Hague Court denunciations and so on - not to mention the vicious breed of journalists - were licking his bloody hands no later than ten days ago. There would be something poetic, though not of course reassuring, if he managed to give them all the slip.
A few years ago, Dame Helen Mirren was awarded the best actress Oscar virtually by acclamation for her performance as the current Queen. Tonight, by all reports, it will be Colin Firth's turn; should he ever, for any reason, fail to get crowned, there will be front-page headlines in five or six continents, howling HE WUZ ROBBED! Not that either performer did not deserve it (both, too, were playing against type, being handsome and expected to play dowdy and retiring types); bot doesn't one get a sense that American and world audiences really have an especial kind of fondness for British actors playing British sovereigns? One might almost suspect that the trauma of the disloyalty of 1776, however good its reasons, had never quite died down. It's all a bit Oedypal.
Now for the nastiest subject by far - sorry, Colonel Gheddafi, but it's far nastier than even you can hope to be. After all, even after you have ceased to shed blood, whether your enemies have caught you and hanged you, or whether you have managed to break them on the battlefield and eventually died on your bed as some murderers have managed, British doctors will still be killing babies. Where abortion is concerned, Britain is a one-party state, where any opposition to the practice will ruin your career with mathematical certainty if you happen to work anywhere near the NHS or the social services, and of course stick you with the deadly brand - nothing deadlier in island society - of religious nutter. And yet - and yet. For a while, I think for a year or so now, there have come noises from the profession of butchers, sorry, doctors, that suggest anger and unease - as though the butchers felt some sort of phantom grip fastening on their hands. It is not that anyone is showing visible doubt or nervousness. Nobody so much as suggests that any pressure against abortion might be perceived. But if none is felt, then why are the professional bodies of butchers, sorry, doctors, becoming shriller and shriller? At the end of June last year, the Royal College Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) released, in its own name and with all the chrism of officiality, a so-called report, claiming that a 24-week-old foetus is incapable of feeling pain. This, mind you, in an age when hundreds of premature babies are brought out at 24 weeks and survive, and the mothers of these children, let alone the nurses and doctors, are capable of seeing with their own eyes that the child does in fact feel and react. It is not even a matter of what you see on a scan screen: it is a matter of hundreds, of thousands of women who have seen, heard, held in their own hand, a child of that age, and been able to see it with their own eyes and hear it with their own ears. I don't think it unfair to say that such an act, such a report, from such a body, is evidence of a collective pathology. And today, only a few months after, the very same body, RCOG, redoubled the evidence for collective mental illness by issuing guidelines - a word which, in the UK, means something almost as binding as laws - that claim for a woman to have an abortion is safer than to have a child. The crazed quality of this was so evident that even BBC journalist Andrew Marr, usually the humblest and most undeviating servant of Political Correctness, was heard to say that perhaps it was not quite as safe for the child. I can only conclude that, although the petrifying force of obstinacy and consensus still don't allow an ordinary observer like myself to see it, these people are scared; nothing except terror can explain the shrill tone and the sheer irrationality of these statements.
A few years ago, Dame Helen Mirren was awarded the best actress Oscar virtually by acclamation for her performance as the current Queen. Tonight, by all reports, it will be Colin Firth's turn; should he ever, for any reason, fail to get crowned, there will be front-page headlines in five or six continents, howling HE WUZ ROBBED! Not that either performer did not deserve it (both, too, were playing against type, being handsome and expected to play dowdy and retiring types); bot doesn't one get a sense that American and world audiences really have an especial kind of fondness for British actors playing British sovereigns? One might almost suspect that the trauma of the disloyalty of 1776, however good its reasons, had never quite died down. It's all a bit Oedypal.
Now for the nastiest subject by far - sorry, Colonel Gheddafi, but it's far nastier than even you can hope to be. After all, even after you have ceased to shed blood, whether your enemies have caught you and hanged you, or whether you have managed to break them on the battlefield and eventually died on your bed as some murderers have managed, British doctors will still be killing babies. Where abortion is concerned, Britain is a one-party state, where any opposition to the practice will ruin your career with mathematical certainty if you happen to work anywhere near the NHS or the social services, and of course stick you with the deadly brand - nothing deadlier in island society - of religious nutter. And yet - and yet. For a while, I think for a year or so now, there have come noises from the profession of butchers, sorry, doctors, that suggest anger and unease - as though the butchers felt some sort of phantom grip fastening on their hands. It is not that anyone is showing visible doubt or nervousness. Nobody so much as suggests that any pressure against abortion might be perceived. But if none is felt, then why are the professional bodies of butchers, sorry, doctors, becoming shriller and shriller? At the end of June last year, the Royal College Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) released, in its own name and with all the chrism of officiality, a so-called report, claiming that a 24-week-old foetus is incapable of feeling pain. This, mind you, in an age when hundreds of premature babies are brought out at 24 weeks and survive, and the mothers of these children, let alone the nurses and doctors, are capable of seeing with their own eyes that the child does in fact feel and react. It is not even a matter of what you see on a scan screen: it is a matter of hundreds, of thousands of women who have seen, heard, held in their own hand, a child of that age, and been able to see it with their own eyes and hear it with their own ears. I don't think it unfair to say that such an act, such a report, from such a body, is evidence of a collective pathology. And today, only a few months after, the very same body, RCOG, redoubled the evidence for collective mental illness by issuing guidelines - a word which, in the UK, means something almost as binding as laws - that claim for a woman to have an abortion is safer than to have a child. The crazed quality of this was so evident that even BBC journalist Andrew Marr, usually the humblest and most undeviating servant of Political Correctness, was heard to say that perhaps it was not quite as safe for the child. I can only conclude that, although the petrifying force of obstinacy and consensus still don't allow an ordinary observer like myself to see it, these people are scared; nothing except terror can explain the shrill tone and the sheer irrationality of these statements.
